• huginn
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    2 months ago

    Controversial opinion: the Internet didn’t die, you just got left behind.

    Gotta keep up. The edge of culture is always moving and trying to stay put is a guarantee that you’ll miss out.

    The community of memes is more varied and nuanced than leekspin ever was. There’s more lowbrow comedy sure but there’s more of all types of content.

    If you only see shit you hate online it’s your fault. Go find places you enjoy (for me that’s lemmy, as an example) and teach your algorithm to stop showing you rage bait by not falling for it.

    Tiktok has plenty of problems but if you teach the algorithm that the only reason you’re there is absurdism and the bizarre: you’ll end up with an absurd and bizarre feed.

    • Liz@midwest.social
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      2 months ago

      For real. Dude is claiming old memes used to be creative while using leek spin as the example.

    • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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      2 months ago

      Yeah but you can only get controlled absurdist bizarre stuff. It’s not people recommending things to you, it’s an algorithm that’s controlled by people with dubious intentions.

      Sure you’ll see memes and funny stuff, but only the ones that have been approved by an unseen algorithm. So it’s the appearance of randomness, but not actually random.

      • huginn
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        2 months ago

        The quality of a meme recommended by a tuned algorithm well exceeds the quality of leekspin on its own, much less in the quantity served.

        Don’t use this shit for your news or to inform your world view but use it to fuck around and enjoy yourself. That’s the point. It’s an endless feed of human creativity and the bizarre. Using it for the serious is the worst way to interact with it.

        Who cares if it’s a human recommending it to me - it’s a human making it and I’m here for the creators not the middlemen.

        • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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          2 months ago

          You’re saying there’s no potential for anyone to put a spin on the memes you’re consuming? You believe it’s not having any kind of influence on you in any way?

          • huginn
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            2 months ago

            Everything always has a spin. It’s important to be critical.

            That’s different than being paranoid that the CCP is controlling my mind by showing me a dog waking up it’s owner at 3am with a bowl in its mouth followed by a truck saying “Fresh milk inside” and then a stereotypical Los Angeles Latino gangster wearing an It mask and huffing from a red balloon in a storm sewer followed up with a woman in purple talking about Victorian street slang.

            You’re being influenced by commenters on lemmy you should probably log off you can never be too careful. I’m actually a CIA psyop here to convince you that TikTok is bad by using reverse psychology.

            • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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              2 months ago

              It’s what you don’t see that’s significant too. Someone from Taiwan making a funny meme that might make you feel like Taiwan is a cool place that you wouldn’t want something bad to happen there? Probably not going to see that. Someone in Hong Kong being nostalgic about when their vote actually made a difference? Not going to see it. A Uighur just talking about their day to day life. Not going to see it.

              Everyone knows people have a limited amount of time to consume information. If they fill up that time with anything and everything other than the things they don’t want you to be thinking about, they can erase these things from public consciousness.

              China is full of fun and happy people! Taiwan, Hong Kong, the Uighur people? Never heard of them!

              When it’s a person discussing things with you rather than a very small set of algorithms controlled by a very small group of people, you’ll hear about things you might not hear about from an algorithm. Sure it’s determined by what the person you’re talking to knows about and what they care about, so it’s very random. But at there’s at least there’s a probability you’ll hear about things that are inconvenient to the powerful people for you to know about.

              • huginn
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                2 months ago

                I have family in Taiwan, (and get Taiwanese content constantly) that’s not a convincing argument. Thanks.

    • AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net
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      2 months ago

      A phrase I read a while back that has pretty dystopian vibes but is pretty useful as a concept is “algorithm domestication”. It’s more or less what you describe in your comment.

    • P4ulin_Kbana@lemmy.eco.br
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      2 months ago

      I also agree, sometimes you forget that just like in the past, you still have to dig to find something good. Maybe the algorithm stuff confused people or something idk

      • huginn
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        2 months ago

        “Rosy retrospection” is the phenomenon.

        Humans are flawed. We forget how much things suck and remember what was nice about them. That can be good in getting along better with other people - but it sure causes a lot of problems in a modern context.

        No - the internet pre-eternal September was not perfect. Objectively speaking it was less useful and less helpful than the modern web. A bunch of old heads got mad that they couldn’t keep using the same crusty Monty Python jokes ad nauseam when they had to routinely interact with the general public.